Watch: The I.D. R On Track

This week was the Volkswagen ID R’s first as a real life and to celebrate it got to stretch its legs at a track on France’s Cevennes mountain range.

The track is in Ales, driver Romain Dumas’ hometown and it’s where the driver trained for his previous Pikes Peak drives.

With an aero package based heavily on Porsche’s erstwhile Le Mans racer (the French connections keep coming), the 919, VW is making the best of its empire. Dumas should also be comfortable with the package since he raced the 919 to victory in 2016.

Pikes Peak is a particularly good place to show off an electric vehicle because the altitude (on top of requiring the massive aero elements) tends to slow down internal combustion cars near the top.

VW faces its own problems getting to the top, though, since electric vehicles require so many batteries to run quickly. If you saw the car’s horsepower figures earlier this week (680 hp, 480 lb-ft of torque) and weren’t quite blown away, that’s as a result of VW’s need to balance the power supply against the weight of the batteries.

Even with power that setup, it weighs in at more than 2,400 lbs, but VW had some tricks up its sleeve. Thanks to its regenerative braking system, it expects the ID R to generate roughly 20% of the energy it uses while going up the course.

Get ready to watch it go up the hill and try for the electric record in June.

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